1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image editing apparatus, an image editing method, an image processing apparatus, and a method for controlling the image processing apparatus, for editing image data obtained by reading a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a system of transmitting image data read by an image reader provided in an image processing apparatus to an image editing apparatus and editing the image data in the image editing apparatus has been constructed. In such a system, a work flow of transmitting the image data edited by the image editing apparatus to the image processing apparatus and printing the image data on a physical medium such as paper is executed.
Examples of an image editing process include an imposing function of laying out image data of two pages on one sheet of paper, resizing, and color correction. Other examples include correction of defective conditions, such as removal of an incorrect rendering portion caused by dust or the like that is mixed when an image reader reads a document and skew correction performed when a document is skewed while the image reader reads the document.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-324790 discloses a process of storing image data read by a reader (image reader) in a database of an image editing apparatus and editing the stored image data to generate new image data. In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-324790, image data to be stored in the database of the image editing apparatus is gradually sized down (the resolution thereof is lowered) and then the image data is encoded. In order to edit the image data, the sized-down encoded image data is decoded and the decoded low-resolution image data is edited. Accordingly, a high-speed process or display can be realized.
In a known method, when image data obtained by reading a document in an image reader should be edited and printed, the image data is transmitted to an image editing apparatus. In this case, the image data itself obtained by reading is transmitted regardless of the type of image editing function applied to the image data. Further, edited image data needs to be transmitted to an image processing apparatus such as a printer so as to be printed. In such a configuration, a network traffic jam is more likely to occur as the amount of image data increases, which causes inhibition of high-rate data transmission.
The above-described known art suggests a solution of converting image data to be edited in the image editing apparatus to low-resolution data and encoding it and then storing the encoded data in the database. However, this known art is applied to the control within the image editing apparatus, and a system including an image editing apparatus, an image reader, and an image processing apparatus connected through a network is not taken into consideration. Further, the throughput is estimated to decrease as the amount of data to be dealt with increases. Therefore, this known art is not a fundamental solution.
The image data read by the image reader has a data format that can be processed in the image processing apparatus. Typically, a data format appropriate for data processing or handling in the image processing apparatus is selected. The selected data format is not predicated on being edited in an external editing apparatus. Therefore, the image data needs to be converted to another data format in order to edit the image data in an external image editing apparatus. As a result, much time is taken to convert the data format and the throughput of the entire system degrades disadvantageously. In the above-described known art, hierarchical low-resolution image data is generated by repeating size-down and encoding in stages, but the difference in data format is not at all considered.
Further, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-324790, image data is converted to low-resolution image data. In this method, the quality of the image data degrades even if a high-resolution image or a high-resolution image reader is used, which is not suitable for a user who requires high-quality image processing. Particularly, in a field of print on demand (POD), degradation of image quality needs to be prevented because printed matter as a product is produced in this field.